


Remember: or in which Steve ponders 9/11

by The_Marauders_Daughter



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, September 11 Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 08:16:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/963675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Marauders_Daughter/pseuds/The_Marauders_Daughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the 12th anniversary of the September 11th attacks in New York. Steve thinks and the team feels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember: or in which Steve ponders 9/11

**Author's Note:**

> Today hit me hard and this idea popped into my head so I had to put it up. Unbeta-d

_Remember._

Darcy’s shirt was fairly innocuous; black cloth, bright white letters spelling out the word. It wasn’t until he caught sight of the dark blue shadows fading from neck to hem that he remembered. 

“Oh, it’s September 11th.”

Darcy looked up from her laptop. “Yeah,” she said softly, looking down at her shirt. “I got this a couple of years ago.” She looked out at the grey sky beyond the wall of windows, gloomy behind clear glass. “Seems appropriate.”

It wasn’t like Steve was completely ignorant. After he returned from his ‘accident,’ the first thing SHIELD had done was play catch-up. The horror of the World Trade Center culminated the seventy-year study session. He’d never seen the towers; they hadn’t been built when he’d last been in New York and obviously they weren’t around anymore. He had seen Ground Zero, though, on his excursions in the city. 

He’d seen hell in the war, seen things and done things that would turn anyone’s stomach, but this was…

SHIELD had been dry with the subject, giving him the barest of facts. The 9/11 Memorial Visitor Center had filled in the rest. After that he’d spent an entire day and night in front of the punching bags. 

“Pretty horrible shit, wasn’t it?” He turned again to Darcy. She’d closed her laptop and pulled her knees to her chest, staring out the windows. 

He walked over and leaned against the glass, meeting her far-off stare. “Do you remember it?”

Darcy was quiet for a long time. “I remember… I remember going to school.” Her voice was soft and she cleared her throat before continuing. “I… I remember that I was in English class. We were doing one of those stupid writing exercises where they give you a prompt and you have to write a full page on it. 

“We were working and… and all of a sudden the teacher next door rushed in and she turned on the TV. It was a big screen they used instead of an overhead and all we saw was the… We saw the towers and there was smoke from where the plane had crashed.” She swallowed hard and Steve thought she was going to stop talking. But she plowed on.

“I remember that they were talking about how it was New York and that it was a horrible accident. We were in Vermont but there was an announcement, that they were going to send us all home, that school had been cancelled and that the busses were going to drop us off again, which was really weird because it was like 9 in the morning. There was—” she held a hand to her head, struggling for words. “There… there was… I can’t remember but we were all crowding around the TV and the second plane crashed in and then we all started crying because it really _wasn’t_ an accident and then the teachers had to calm all of us down and—” She swung her head up and looked him in the eye. “That was all that they played on the TV when I got home and it wasn’t until later that they told us what had really happened, but all I can remember is that feeling of _oh-my-god_  because it was something that had actually happened. It wasn’t a movie or a dream, but something real and—” Darcy sighed and wrapped her arms around her legs. “I was twelve. I had a friend who had family here and she lost her uncle. He was in the tower when the plane hit. ”

Steve didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t really meant to ask her the question in the first place, much less expected her answer, but all he could find to do was walk over and sit on the couch with her and hug her tight.

He really shouldn’t have been surprised when Clint showed up. “9/11?”

Steve nodded. 

“I heard Darcy talking.” He perched himself on the counter of the kitchen. “I was off in deep cover in Bosnia, but I heard about the attack. It was all over the newspapers. Everyone got reassigned after that, to prevent something like that happening again. I came here a while later. The wreckage… there was a lot of wreckage.”

“So SHIELD didn’t have secret knowledge beforehand?” Tony walked out of nowhere and flung himself onto a couch opposite Steve and Darcy. “Might as well make it a story time, right?”

“What do you remember?” Clint asked, ignoring his question. 

“I was in Boston,” he shrugged. “I was giving a guest lecture at MIT for their robotics department or something. They cancelled it when the news came on, but we all stood around watching the coverage. It was…” his voice was devoid of all sarcasm, so grave it actually creeped Steve out a little. “We saw the towers fall. They kept showing—” he moved his hand around to demonstrate, running the other through his hair. “They kept showing the footage where the people jumped because they couldn’t escape. They—they—they jumped out of the window and _died_ because some stupid fuckers decided to crash planes all over the eastern seaboard.” He pushed onto his feet and padded over to the bar.

“That’s when military contracts really took off, I take it.” Bruce walked in and took the bottle of scotch from Tony, forcing him to use a glass instead.

“Where were you when it happened?” Darcy asked quietly.

“Culver,” he said simply. “I was in the lab, but Betty pulled me out to the faculty lounge. It was the same kind of thing; human nature, I suppose.” Steve expected him to start getting angry, but instead Bruce just looked sad. “We weren’t in New York, obviously, but I had a cousin who lived here. He lived in Queens, but he told me later that he could see everything, the smoke and the towers fall. Clean-up took forever, he said.”

“I didn’t know you had a cousin,” Tony said. 

“He died in a car accident a couple of years ago,” Bruce answered evenly.

“Oh.”

They sat in silence for a while, staring out the window. It was a strange sight, as both Tony and Clint weren’t bouncing off the walls with their usual high energy, but it was understandable. Tony reclaimed the bottle of scotch and passed it around. Bruce denied the drink, but Clint, Darcy and even Steve took a long swallow from the bottle. Eventually, Pepper and Natasha joined them.

“I thought you two had meetings all day,” Tony said, making room for Pepper next to him on the loveseat. 

“We did,” she said, shaking off her eerily steep high heels, “but then JARVIS told up what was going on and we decided it would be a better idea to make this a day off for everybody.”

Natasha denied the scotch Clint offered her, finding a bottle of vodka she’d stashed at some point above the refrigerator. She took a sip and curled up—because the Black Widow did not snuggle, even now—against Clint. 

“So how does our favorite Russian remember the event?” 

Natasha fixed Tony with a glare. “I’ve killed people since I was fourteen. I once burnt a hospital to the ground. I’ve kidnapped children and tortured war lords.”

Tony didn’t even blink. “So?”

She sighed and sunk into the cushions. “I find that event horrible.” She took another sip. “I was at the White House.”

Even after an hour of interrogation, a new bottle of fermented potato juice and promises of material goods, Natasha wouldn’t say anything more.

“And you, Pep?”

Pepper turned her head up to Tony. “You didn’t tell them?” Tony scowled and stood up, deciding to pace the room instead. “I was here.”

“What?!”

Pepper nodded. “I was supposed to attend a meeting with new potential clients at the South Tower. At the very last minute the client said they had a problem with the paperwork and we rescheduled for later that day. The first plane crashed a half-hour later.”

“Oh my god…”

Pepper smiled sadly at Darcy. “It’s ok. I was really freaked out—everybody was; I… knew some of the victims. Tony had a stronger reaction than I did, though. He accepted nearly all the military contracts they pushed at Stark Industries, he bought the private jet, and he hired Happy.”

“Wait,” Clint said. “I thought Happy was originally _your_ bodyguard, Tony.”

Tony shook his head. “He was Pepper’s.” He shot her a smile. “I guess I knew I liked you even back then, Potts.” She rewarded him with a kiss.

Steve looked around the room at his team—well, his family, really. Or most of them. 

Darcy seemed to catch on to what he was doing and took his hand. “Jane went off with Thor to Asgard, remember?”

And he did. He just hoped Thor wouldn’t realize the importance of the date or Jane would have her hands full explaining terrorism to him.

That idea got him thinking. Terrorism was a concept that existed long before even his time, but the word hadn’t really gained meaning until 2001. He remembered what life was like when he was growing up; for all its struggles, people were kind and polite and didn’t seem to suffer paranoia like the current generation did. 

He thought of Darcy, of her energy and life. How even though she had a soul that drew him in like a moth to flame there was still an air of precaution around her. He thought of Tony, who had no limits and yet became a superhero after the terror he survived in the Middle East. He thought of Bruce. Natasha. Clint. Even Jane.

It changed people. 

He ruminated on that thought too, so long even Tony noticed.

“What’s the matter, Capsicle? Trying to figure out how you could have singlehandedly prevented 9/11?”

Darcy threw a shoe at him. “Shut up, Tony.” 

Steve shook his head. “I’m just thinking how this changed people.”

“Damn right it did,” Tony answered, but the barb didn’t carry heat. “It woke us up to the fact that the world has never been safe.”

“But…” Steve ran a hand over his cheek. “It changed people more than that.”

“How so?” Pepper asked.

“It was a direct attack on the United States,” he said slowly. “The only wars ever fought here happened over a hundred years ago—shut up, Tony.” He let out a breath. “After something like that people should’ve locked themselves in their basements armed to the teeth with guns and never gone outside again.”

“We did do that for a while,” Bruce mused.

“But we’re stronger than that,” Darcy said. “We got past that and even though we’re still fighting a war over it, we’re not hiding out in bomb shelters.”

“Exactly,” Steve smiled. “We’re strong.”

The room got quiet again, but there was a change in the air. They still looked out at the grey clouds now pelting the glass with rain. After a while Tony asked JARVIS to cue up the news footage from the day the towers fell. They watched the story unfold before them again, faces grimly taking in the loss that occurred that day. Pepper cried a little and Tony held her. Watching the screen, Steve felt the same horror that he’d felt when he’d first seen the images. He still felt sick to his stomach, and when Darcy curled herself around his arm, he felt tears fill his eyes to match hers.

Natasha had said it perfectly: it was a horrible event.

Terrible.

Terrifying.

But there was something about watching and remembering that made him feel better. When they shut off the footage and ordered pizza, going back to their old selves with just a touch of reserve, he wondered what it was.

Thankfulness.

Pride.

Respect.

He felt all of it, for the people who died and for those left behind. For those who survived. He settled on the word _alive_ , because for all that had happened, they really _were_ stronger, ready to remember the past but also ready to move forward.

They had to live.

He felt they owed it to them.

**Author's Note:**

> I know people have really strong feelings about what happened twelve years ago today. This work is completely about paying respects and I do NOT mean for this to become a political warground. Please, if there are flames, let them be for my writing, not for 9/11. Thank you.


End file.
